War and Peace: A Global History

Catalog description

A seminar examining how the categories of “war” and “peace” have emerged over time and place. How does a society decide that a war exists or has ended, or that there is peace, or that peace has been violated? How has the practice of war and the practice of peace changed over the course of history? We approach these questions by looking at a series of case studies, from Greek-Persian relations of the fifth century BCE to the Mongol imperial system of the thirteenth century to the twentieth-century World Wars and recent efforts (successful and failed) at global governance.